Mikhail Kravets: Avangard showed character and scored good goals

On August 21, Avangard defeated Neftekhimik in Blinov’s tournament in overtime 5:4, and his mentor Mikhail Kravets appreciated this meeting. In particular, he answered questions about forwards Nikolishin and Mikhailov.

The coach considered the match itself both with pluses and minuses.

– The game turned out to be ambiguous, with both good and bad moments. We won, lost, compared, pulled ahead … What we liked – they showed character, scored very good goals. Here, we need to work on the majority, as well as on the throw-ins, and in the end, in the tension of the whole game, we didn’t play well enough in defense, which led to goals. Plus, in the majority, you also need to play better.

But in general, we looked at the guys in a game situation, who can stand it in such a situation, who do not. Who needs to add what. Good tournament, good games, I’m glad that we won and pleased the fans with our “favorite” valid victory (smiles).

– How would you rate the game of Mikhailov in the center of the first link and why in this sense the choice fell on him?

– This season we decided to give him the opportunity to play in the center, especially with this axis we had a tense situation. I think that in Sochi he played pretty well. Here – could play better. But I think there are still more benefits. The most important thing is that we can use it both as an extreme and as a central one. This is a plus.

– Now Avangard has officially acquired forward Ivan Nikolishin, how do you assess his strength, including remembering his statistics last season?

– I will not evaluate it by last season, I will evaluate it when I worked at Amur. He then showed himself great there, he is a good center, he plays every game at a high level. I hope and, as far as I know, no injuries now bother him. We are counting on him. And I hope he will play in the next meeting of the tournament.

– Do you think there can be many such situations in the season when at the end of regular time the opponent gets the majority, and in overtime he removes the goalkeeper and releases another player instead of him and his gates remain empty?

– Well, it’s better to ask the coach of the other team about it. Here it was his decision. I myself think that it is not bad, why not? It’s just that on a throw-in in such a situation, you have to be prepared that you will lose it and give your opponent a chance to score such a goal as today.

Here, again, everything depends on the performers, and ideas may be different. He really wanted to win, I think so.

Earlier we cited the opinion of Kravets about the game with Lokomotiv.